Monthly Archives: October 2014

It’s 2 a.m.

I wake up and pad down the hallway to the kitchen. On the floor is a bag. Meant to be garbage. I crack open the refrigerator door for light. Fumble around inside the bag until I can feel conical shapes wrapped in gold tinfoil. Bonanza. I found the loot. It takes only a second to rip open the wrappers and start eating. But first, I pick up the chocolates, walk to the sink, and take a drink of water.

Web MD says NES is “when a person eats during the night with full awareness and may be unable to fall asleep again unless he/she eats.”

But all I know is that in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep – Chocolate. Tastes. So. Good.

I sink my teeth into a gooey caramel center and find the golden nugget – a perfect hazelnut that crunches between my teeth. I always wait for it to start tasting bad – some people promise that if you are “off sugar” long enough it will taste gross. Or that cheap chocolate will be a turn off. I wish that were me. I am not elitist during the witching hour. Even as my brain screams no, I plunge my hand back into the bag for more.

That was last night. But it used to be every night of the year. It used to be worse.

I used to binge in full daylight and on all sorts of thing that made me sick – bread, pizza, candy. And later, after I went gluten free – gluten free versions of the same, plus rice and other pseudo-grains. It wasn’t until I started studying nutrition that I understood why I had chronic stomach aches, gas, inflammation, bloating, colitis, itching, eczema, and more. Adopting a Paleo diet helped nip daytime binging in the bud – I finally fed myself real, whole foods with nutrients that kept me satiated. I started healing and many of my symptoms went away naturally. I stopped searching for my next sugar fix.

Right?

Not during the day, at least.

It’s Oct 31, people.

The birth of a bad habit

I started eating in the middle of the night (M.O.N. is the notation I use in my food journal) when I was nursing my first child. Lack of sleep made me chronically short on energy and I would get roaringly hungry at 2 and 4 a.m. I ate to fall back asleep. My second pregnancy came shortly after the first, and my sleep stayed disrupted. I had low progesterone, depression, and serious weight gain (30kg). I ate mostly white bread and cream cheese. Real food when I could stomach it. I nursed and ate. Nursed and ate. Drank barley malt beverages to increase my milk. Ate bulgur, telling myself it was better than bread or rice. My sleep never fully recovered.

My point in explaining my trajectory is this: I have had over eight years since the birth of my first child to solidify my night-eating habits. Plus 36 years of being alive, every single one of those days involving food. It did not happen overnight. Andone night of kneeling at the altar of factory-made chocolate will not blow apart all the positive changes I’ve made, either.

I promised when I started this blog that I would not focus on perfection – how many days in a row I’ve gone without binging. Or without sugar. I’m not going to talk (today) about deprivation, insulin levels, hormones, or any of the other possible reasons for why the urge to binge still hits hard. I want to separate that from the closer picture: a woman leaning over a sink eating a bag of chocolates. She is not depressed, not lonely, and has a full life. She knows a lot about food. And addiction. She likes the taste of chocolate, but not during the day. She likes it at night in secret.

And that is why, dear Foodling, I am confessing. Even when someone’s auntie-teyze is shoveling more food onto my plate, I have a choice. It sucks to have to admit that no one, unless you are a two-year-old Turkish child at a park being chased with a spoon, is going to shove food down your throat. Even when it is the middle of the night and it feels like sleepwalking. It would be easier to say I have a disorder. It gets me off the hook. But acknowledging I have control is powerful.

I taught myself some really bad habits. And I am un-learning them. Binge happens. Urges happen. Now, can we get back to living?

By the glow of the fridge

Rather than launch into the tools I have learned for how to cope in this post, I want to return to the kitchen at 2 a.m. My palms shake when I realize just how far I’ve gone. I turn on my heel and march to the bathroom. I do not purge. I brush my teeth. Sink into the mattress next to my daughter who has crawled into my bed. Regret can wait until tomorrow, I tell myself.

And it does. I wake up with a pit in my stomach. A fear of the scale. A fear of what the lactose and soy lecithin and unpronounceable chemicals will do to my digestion. Not all of us can learn from scare tactics and threats: this ingredient will make you sick, make you gain weight. Or maybe it freaks us out enough during the day that we don’t binge. But come nightfall, no one is watching, right?

I am sharing this because I know what it is like to go into a dark place and blame myself. I also know what it is like to emerge from that and feel good. Really good. Even if I wake up in the morning and find bits of gold-leaf wrappers dusting the counter and the floor and my heart sinks.

I did it again.

And given my track record, probably will again. But maybe I won’t. Do I really want to spend all my time worrying about the odds?

I’d like to get back to bacon. Having enough energy to do box jumps and pull-ups. Writing a book. Deep living. For just right now, let’s be proud of how far that woman at the sink has come. Maybe she eats one less piece of chocolate.

Or maybe, she takes that bag, ties it up tight, and walks it out to the garbage can. Thunk.

How about when you are huddled under a blanket trying to sweat out a fever? How about when after MONTHS of feeling great and woo-hoo maybe I’m ONTO SOMETHING PEOPLE you get too sick to crawl out of bed?

Yeah, that time. Because last week I bought www.paleoabroad.com’s domain name, fired up Pinterest and Twitter, and excited to log some hours designing stuff again, whipped up a logo. The NEXT DAY I woke up and felt like my intestines were being ripped out and that wonderful feeling lasted through the weekend. Perfect timing.

This is what some people might call the universe taking artistic license with the word sarcasm. I call it keeping it real. Because my life is nothing but – schlepping kids to school, slapping together meals, and doing it all in a second language.

At the same time I was also maybe just a little wee bit excited about a contest I submitted my young adult novel to on Twitter (no dice – I’ll keep trying). And constantly refreshing my Twitter stream didn’t leave much head space for noting the usual signs for unwellness – headache, trouble sleeping, and a preoccupation with checking my spam folder for missed emails.

But thanks to the kindness of a partner in crime dear friend, I was spoiled with warm soup and a fuzzy blanket. And out of the goodness of her heart, she is sharing her recipe for Carrot Soup with me so I can return the favor one day.

My friends take such good care of me — they feed me carrot soup and roasted potatoes and let me spend aaaaaallll day on their couch wrapped up in a blanket.

Melt butter in soup pot and add quartered onion, sauteing until onion separates and turns golden. Add water, bone broth, and salt, and dump those beautiful carrot rounds on top, cooking on low heat until the carrots are tender and a fork easily pokes through. Remove from heat. Using a submersible soup blender (or if you are fancy and have a Vitamix or other mixer suitable for pureeing hot liquids), puree on low until soup is smooth and creamy. Serve immediately.

A picture of my sweet potatoes – aren’t you excited? Grown in our garden in Sapakpınar, Turkey on a plot of land that also boasts walnut trees, Turkish pumpkins, and seasonal fruit and veggies. But the sweet potatoes are by far my favorite, and what I have missed the most. These beauties were grown from organic slips that I brought from Wisconsin and grew indoors. I held my breath during the first planting – would they grow here? Turkey is known for flavorful yellow potatoes, but other colors and varieties are hard to find. The first harvest was just enough for our family, and last year we grew about 30kg, but this year we expect to have over 150kg.

My green thumb has until recent history kept only hearty spider plants and cacti alive. Growing the slips indoors was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve ever had – watching the roots grow, gorgeous stems and leaves sprouting from the top. I’m pretty sure I watched this video or the equivalent to learn how. You can also plant in a bag of soil or on a balcony. The trickiest part for me was sprouting the slips at the right time of year for planting (after the last frost). The plants grew fast, so I transferred them to long, narrow basins that I filled with soil so the plants could take root and get a head start while indoors.

I like talking about food – a lot. An nauseum if you ask some people. That is one reason I started this blog. I also like feeling good – another topic that I love to talk about. But food and feeling good could not, no matter how hard I tried, fit into the same sentence several years ago. That has changed since I started eating whole foods and making lifestyle changes.

The other reason I started this blog is because I live abroad. I find it challenging – actually, in some cases, impossible – to have access to the same resources as friends and family at home. I’ve learned some stuff along the way that may be useful. Maybe it will be useful to you, too. And that’s the third reason I started this blog – I love to share.

Welcome to my table. Hoş Geldiniz.

The name Paleo Abroad is a little bit deceiving. I do not mean only someone living overseas trying to live it up Paleo style. I mean abroad – as is expanding one’s horizons. And for me that has meant getting over my fear of giving up the stuff that is traditionally excluded on a Paleo diet – grains, dairy (with exceptions), legumes, and that pillowy white stuff – sugar.

About Paleo Abroad

Paleo Abroad is the food child of farm-girl turned expat Rose Deniz. Exploring the crossroads of food and wellness while plotting an escape to a Turkish village to raise chickens, she writes direct from one local corner of the global world to yours.

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Disclaimer

Dear Foodling: the opinions and any advice on this website are based on my personal experience, and are not intended to replace the services of trained medical professionals. Kindly seek help if needed.